[CW] Bug Sending Flourishing Fingers or Rolling Forearm?

[Donald Chester via CW]

On my circa 1925 Vibroplex Original, the damper wheel Is unrestrained but it
doesn't always turn.  In fact, there is a  slight groove worn in one spot on
the side of the wheel where it was evidently used for many years with the
wheel stuck and not turning at all.  I tried to carefully smooth out the
groove with a file and emery cloth, but that didn't help much.  I
occasionally re-position the wheel by hand when it appears to be stalled and
not turning, but the lack of turning doesn't  seem to hamper the damping
function; I just don't want to keep on wearing the groove any deeper. When I
acquired it at a hamfest, it was a real basket  case and required a great
deal of careful restoration.  I  suspect it had seen many, many years of
heavy use and abuse in landline service, probably at a railway station given
the heavy layer of black sooty crud that was caked all over it.  There is a
lot of mechanical slop in the moving parts probably due to excessive wear,
but it still sends beautifully, velvet smooth, clean dits, far better than
my 1947 Original or my Lionel J-36, both of which are stiff and full of
contact bounce. I enjoy using it so much that my iambic keyer has for years
collected dust on the shelf.

I make the final adjustment to my dit contacts by firing up my transmitter
which has a class-C final, taking a plate or grid current reading with the
switch closed or holding the dah contacts down, and then send a string of
high speed dits and adjust  the contact spacing until the plate or grid
current meter reads just slightly less than half the current that it read
with the switch closed.  This works on the same principle as an old
fashioned automotive dwell meter for adjusting mechanical ignition points.
Another method  that works well is to use a good quality analogue ohmmeter
like a Simpson 260. Set the ohms adjustment to read exactly full meter scale
with the contacts touching, then send dits and adjust the spacing  until the
meter reads just slightly  less than mid-scale.  By mid-scale, I mean with
the pointer straight up vertical, halfway between zero and full scale, NOT
half the reading on the ohms scale. 

I don't exactly rotate my forearm when sending; I tend to rest my wrist on
the table with my forearm hanging over the edge, and rotate my wrist to
send.  I sometimes rest my elbow on the pull-out thingy over the top desk
drawer. If I am using an armchair, I may rest my elbow on the chair arm, but
my normal operating chair doesn't have an arm. The idea is to  rest the arm
at two points, the wrist and elbow, with the wrist rest elevated an inch or
two higher than the elbow rest.

Don k4kyv


-----Original Message-----
Here is a closeup of bug setup looking at the damper adjustment - "just so
it touches the wheel on the damper - and the damper wheel is unrestrained so
that it moves!".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpAuWL7vnMI

I always asked the best operators I ever heard for advice and I was told I
could send faster, longer, and clearer by rotating the forearm to send.  I
have found this to be true.

David N1EA


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